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Announcements

Muin Rises: Cheryl Bartlett becomes Member of the Order of Canada

Remember IYA2009 and the Mi'kmaq sky story about Muin and the Seven Bird Hunters? Well, Muin is rising again! On 30 December 2011, new members of the Order of Canada were announced. Cheryl Bartlett, who worked closely with Mi’kmaq Elders to bring a significant component of Aboriginal astronomical knowledge into IYA2009 in Canada, was made a member of the Order of Canada.  The full list is at the link below, from which is copied Cheryl’s citation:

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Announcements

RASC Astronomy Blog Contest Now Open!

2011 was another interesting year in the universe with exoplanets, near-Earth asteroids and sun-grazing comets dominating the astronomy news wire but how was it for you? Personally?

Did you:

  • Complete an observing challenge?
  • See your first meteor shower, aurorae or eclipse?
  • Pass a milestone for astronomical observations or other activities?
  • Get some really cool new equipment AND have it work the first time?

Your astronomical Society wants to know and there are prizes!

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Announcements

Andrew Fraknoi becomes Honorary Member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada

Andrew Fraknoi, chair of the Foothill College astronomy department is honorary member of the RASC. See the article my clicking here:

http://www.mv-voice.com/news/show_story.php?id=5041

 

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Northern Skies

Ontario Fireball Captured by UWO Camera Network

Astronomers from The University of Western Ontario have released footage of a meteor, which was captured by its highly advanced video surveillance system, traveling through the evening sky east of Toronto on Monday evening (December 12, 2011).

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Announcements

First call for PSP in 2012

This is the first announcement calling for applications for the 2012 Public Speaker Program.

Three Trustees, Hugues Lacombe, Centre francophone de Montréal, Bruce McCurdy, Edmonton Centre, and I will accept and assess applications from Centres or Speakers for travel in the first half of 2012 -- January 1 to June 30.

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Announcements

New Mailing Lists and Features from the RASC!

RASC members can now sign-up directly for our public discussion groups from the new National website. Here is a list of groups that are available:

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Astronomy Outreach

Nobel Prize winner funds school astronomy program

Dr. Brian Schmidt, who won this year's Nobel Prize for Physics (with Dr. Saul Perlmutter and Dr. Adam Riess; see December 2011 JRASC, page 228), is using part of his prize money to fund an astronomy education program discontinued by the Australian government.

For more information see the full story here:

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Announcements

Secure Web Portal Outage December 4th

The RASC's supplier of secure web hosting services experienced a hardware failure with their firewall facility which disrupted services on the RASC eStore and on the members-only area of the RASC website on Sunday. This issue has now been resolved and our supplier is investigating additional redundancy and failure-prevention techniques to prevent a reoccurence of the problem. The Society apologizes for any inconvenience this isolated event may have caused.

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Northern Skies

Deep Sky Gems Observing List Revised

As published in the December issue of the Bulletin, the "Deep-Sky Gems" list compiled by David Levy was very recently revised in order to complete its evolution into an RASC observing program with certificate. Now your brand-new Observer's Handbook 2012 is out-of-date, even before the year begins! To correct this and with the author's approval, we revised the DSG Handbook article as we expect it to look in the 2013 edition, and we have made the entire 4 pages available online as a PDF download.

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Northern Skies

The Sky This Month - December 2011

The Fair Maiden - Andromeda

Whenever the name Andromeda arises in conversation or in print, we immediately visualize a majestic galaxy. The Andromeda Galaxy, aka M31 is located a mere 2.9 million light years - down the cosmic highway. This island of an estimated 400 billion stars can even be spotted naked eye from dark locations. M31 is flanked by two smaller galaxies known as M32 and M110. Mythology depicts Andromeda as the daughter of King Cepheus and Queen Cassiopeia and was sacrificed to the sea monster Cetus, but Perseus saved the day.

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